Georgian Chicken in Pomegranate and Tamarind Sauce Recipe (2024)

Nice if recipe included onion dice size (mine was smaller) & cilantro chop size (mine was fine). Substituted pomegranate molasses mixed with 1/2 c water--worked great. Sauce needed ketchup so I added 1/2 way through. More salt recommended. Use at least the amt of thighs/legs called for, if not more. I would change onions to 2 red, 2 yellow, 2 lg sweet. Pomegranate seeds are a must...they are fabulous! If serving to a group, would put an xtra bowl of seeds on side. Would cook again!

The sauce seemed to need extra time for thickening. We moved the chicken pieces to a baking dish, cooked down the sauce, added the thickened sauce to the baking dish and broiled to get a better color and a bit of crispiness.

This recipe was delicious, with amazing flavor and very satisfying. I used boneless, skinless chicken breasts, and everything else was as done exactly as written. I will be adding this recipe to my usual rotation as it was fantastic. I love the balance of sweet and tangy/sour. I made Tahdigh/Persian Polow to go with it.

We have used pomegranate molasses and it works just fine.

This is a wonderful recipe! However, I think next time I will make some adjustments as to the amount of chicken and onions so that I can serve it to a family of 4! Twenty pieces of chicken is a lot! But, Yum! What flavor!

Made a half-recipe of this and we liked it. I skipped the ketchup and meant to replace it with tomato paste, but forgot. It definitely needed more salt, and next time I would skip the black pepper (just not a fan of pepper). Served it with beets and orzo.

Pomegranate paste = pomegranate molasses. Same thing. This was delicious. I made it per recipe with minor adjustments per notes. I added 1T oil to the dutch oven and sweated the onions ~8 min, adding the garlic toward the end of that. Subbed tomato paste for ketchup. The rest I did as written.The chicken was fall-off-the-bone tender and had the most delicious fruity sweet/sour onion gravy. Served over rice scattered with pomegranate seeds. Don’t skip the arils, it really pops with them.

Meh. Made it exactly as instructed. Way, way too much raw onion flavor dominating. Had to add more tamarind and (gulp) ketchup just to smooth that out. And the chicken fell apart after so much time. No real sweetness. Just onions. Ugh.On the positive side, because this called for skinless parts, I was able to schmaltz up some gribenes. And that was delicious. This, unfortunately, was a no go.

Spectacular recipe. That said, I didn't have this many onions on hand and used one very large onion, and it was plenty. I decided to bake/roast it--covered at 350 for an hour, and then uncovered at 425 to crisp up for a bit. Then basted, and topped with the pomegranate seeds and cilantro. Yum!

So much wonderful sauce! After devouring the chicken, I froze at least a pint of sauce to put on rice at some later date. This is not a complaint, merely a comment!

Thanks to comments, I browned the thighs first - then sautéed the onions and added the other ingredients to blend well before adding the browned chicken. I had no ketchup so used tomato paste. Then at the end I removed the chicken and let the sauce cook down a bit before adding the chicken back in. Delicious!!!

I'm unclear on one thing: Do we drop the RAW chicken pieces into the sauce and then cook? Or do we sear the chicken pieces first? Please advise. Thanks.

I would definitely add extra time to cook down onions. That’s not the reason why I am commenting though. This dish is SUPERB the next day. It all comes together and mellows out in a fantastic way. I made this with the Persian jewelled rice and everything went together beautifully.

Such an elegant chicken dish - very French feeling, despite the non traditional French ingredients. Following the recipe, I think mine came out perhaps a little soupier than I thought. The sauce hadn’t thickened into what I imagined would be a more caramelized glaze, but no matter. The dish was delicious. It needs more salt and spice than what’s called for in the recipe. Pomegranate seeds as garnish a must.

Overall very good. Tasted before serving and tweaked:* Strained out onions and cooked them down in a separate pan until silky (initial texture was a bit cruncy/raw even after an extended simmer; patient sauté sans water helps)* Scooped out the chicken onto a serving platter so I could boil down the remaining sauce, thickening with 2-3 Tbsp flour + 1-2 Tbsp cornstarch in a paste (transformed from a thin liquid to a velvety pourable glaze)Next time I'd cook this like a paprikash.

Superb recipe. There was a similar dish at a thriving south Bombay restaurant (affordable, popular with students). Most people, including me, thought it was a Muslim joint, but the food was different from the typical Mughlai. I recognized the dishes as Jewish only after encountering Asian-Jewish recipes after coming to the US. (Baghdadi Jews, whose leader was the businessman/ philanthropist David Sassoon, arrived en masse in Bombay, via Persia, in the 1830s after persecution in Iraq.)

Pomegranate paste = pomegranate molasses. Same thing. This was delicious. I made it per recipe with minor adjustments per notes. I added 1T oil to the dutch oven and sweated the onions ~8 min, adding the garlic toward the end of that. Subbed tomato paste for ketchup. The rest I did as written.The chicken was fall-off-the-bone tender and had the most delicious fruity sweet/sour onion gravy. Served over rice scattered with pomegranate seeds. Don’t skip the arils, it really pops with them.

This was delicious and easy. Browned the chicken first, so started with a hot pan, and left the onions sliced and still it cooked down to be very saucy. Served w rice (but mashed potatoes would go well too) and an arugula salad. Yum.

I rate this "looks good on paper". If you have some pomegranate molasses you bought for an Ottolenghi dish and it's been languishing in the cupboard ever since, and some tamarind you use once a year, this is a good way to use some of it but I wouldn't buy these ingredients specially for this recipe. I would brown the onions next time to give a bit more depth (I sweated them in a bit of oil after noting the crunch onions complaints.) And would pressure cook to cut down on time.

Meh. Made it exactly as instructed. Way, way too much raw onion flavor dominating. Had to add more tamarind and (gulp) ketchup just to smooth that out. And the chicken fell apart after so much time. No real sweetness. Just onions. Ugh.On the positive side, because this called for skinless parts, I was able to schmaltz up some gribenes. And that was delicious. This, unfortunately, was a no go.

This was a very easy recipe - no browing of onions or chicken, just throw everything in a pot and slow cook! Flavor was nice, but lacked depth. As others have mentioned, you might want to: 1) take the chicken out and cook the sauce longer (mine wasn't so much watery as full of still-crunchy diced onions); 2) add a few spices (I'm thinking cinnamon, cloves, allspice, definitely coriander, maybe a few herbs); 3) broil chicken at end. I might brown half the onions before putting them in the pot.

Has anyone tried to do this with a cilantro substitute. (I love cilantro, but some of my relatives have that awful genetic variation that makes it taste like soap to them.)

This is also a great dish to make for company. Once it’s in the pot, there is very little to do for a long period of time. It’s really quite delicious.